That’s what attracted me, an ad in the Courier Post after Melanie said we’re not making it, even close. The phone calls were cluttering up our answering machine. We had one bill collector say, “American Express is bigger than you and bigger than me. Do you know what they can do to you?” So, I’ll have to find a job. The timing for this is always the same, always when I’ve just finished another novel, when in walks Melanie, into the den, sits down and says she’s happy that I’ve finished up, but that I’ll need to get a job. Writing a novel is wonderful, but you still need a job.
Right after you’ve finished a novel it’s time to pack and off to Europe. That’s what they do, what successful writers do, off to Europe. Or, some vacation, anywhere, if Europe is in the dog house for the moment. France used to be the place. You were bound to run into Hemingway, Joyce, Picasso, James Jones, Henry Miller. They didn’t fly. They sailed, on the Queen Mary.
But if Europe is in disgrace, Paris especially, and even Sweden, there’s always Mexico. We’ll always have Mexico. So that’s what I’m thinking. I’m done, done the novel, and I’m pleased. There is nothing as pleasing as finishing up a novel. You’ve done the rewrite, 20 times, and feel a sense of soaring achievement.
That’s when Melanie steps in and sits down, her expression, heavy. It’s full of love, but heavy. I show her the pages I’ve just printed out. She shows me the bill that just arrived. Where shall we go, Monaco, Cancun? No, up the street to the newsstand, that’s where we shall go, for the Want Ads.
“Our Benefits Package Is Like No Other,” says the ad under casinos in the Courier Post.
Luckily, there’s a train stop right near where we live, the Lindenwold Station. Next day I’m in the personnel office. I’m sitting at one of those school desks. There are six rows of them, here in human resources, all busy with people filling out applications, me right in the middle. There are only three other guys my age, the rest are kids. We’re all on our best behavior. We don’t want to be sent to the principal’s office. We want to fit. We want to get hired. Times are tough.
I am the only one wearing a suit and tie. In my business that means you’ve lost, you’re starting over again with a smile and a shine.
The ad was for slot attendants. I did not know what that was. I thought it was something like a slot host, though I did not know what that was either, though from my visits to the casino, I knew there were people walking around with suits and badges who back-slapped the customers, and that didn’t seem so bad. Humbling, but not bad.
But it is good to be humbled. Samuel Beckett died in a nursing home, alone, forgotten.
Actually, it had been years since I’d been nailed to a regular job. My freelance journalism, together with Melanie’s book review operation, kept us going. My end dried up when I wholeheartedly joined the literary racket. We were also kept afloat from sales of The Ice King. I keep forgetting that part, it was so long ago.
That first check was a whopper, for us, and then other monies followed, from domestic sales, from overseas transactions, from Hollywood.
We thought bigger things were sure to follow, bigger books, bigger contracts, bigger checks.
So I’m filling out my application for slot attendant and don’t know what to write, what to say about myself that will make any sense, for it makes no sense, one from the other, one from a background such as mine, to this. Job applications are meant for people who move from job to job, not book to book, or book to movie – and how to explain the fall and decline!
The Ice King, for the moment, this moment, in this room, and all other rooms where I sought work, is a liability. Everyone saw the movie. Some – quite a few actually – read the book. There is no explaining what happened. Makes no sense. Melanie says she can’t even explain it to her mother. The way it’s supposed to be according to her mother, and according to all other moms and dads; you work hard, you prosper.
So…what experience do I have in casinos? That’s one of the questions. Well, I watch my wife play the slots once in a while.
What experience do I have in the world of GAMING? Well, I play the horses every chance I get.
They want references. Do I refer them to all the newspapers that have published me, including The New York Times?
Do I refer them to the publisher that sold a million copies of The Ice King?
Would I want those calls to be made? I can only imagine the laughter.
Except for the usual name, rank and serial number, I hand in a nearly blank application form to the harried clerk behind the counter. I figure that I am the only human who has ever flunked an application form. The clerk, a kid with a Spanish accent, says, “What’s this?” I explain that I’ll need to talk to someone. He says that’s against procedure, first the application, filled out in full, then the interview. I figure this to be the end, back home I go – famous author returns, tail between his legs. Best I could tell Melanie is, I tried.
That won’t pay the bills. Trying is not an option. I must try harder.
“Can’t I just talk to someone?”
“That’s what you’re doing,” he says, and that’s a fact.
“I mean…”
“I know what you mean,” he says, almost sympathetically, as it is obvious that I am, well, different.
He calls over a supervisor.
“Sorry,” she says, “you have to fill the whole thing out. No exceptions.”
When she leaves, the kid says, nicely, “What’s the problem?”
“No problem except that I need to talk about this.”
“I don’t make the rules,” he says with a shrug. “I just work here like everybody else.”
Just then a door opens from one of the offices and out steps a guy who has the appearance of show biz, Hollywood. He’s handsome and slick and walks with the authority and impatience of a man with bigger things on his mind. He’s got flair. My kind of guy, under the circumstances. There is nothing clerkish or routine about him. In fact, he seems out of place, as if he does belong in Hollywood. He’s got a Robert Evans way about him.
I wave, to get his attention, and he responds. This is exactly the man. He’s doing the interviews for slot attendant. He’s a shift manager, a high position in this world.
“I just need five minutes,” I tell him.
“You got it,” he says.
We’re in his office and we click. We get along beautifully. Because…because I tell him the truth. No choice anyway. He can look me up. The computer is right there, on the desk. So I tell him everything and his eyes do pop when I mention The Ice King, a movie that he saw (of course) and enjoyed. He is kind enough not to ask, specifically, what has brought me to this level. He’s cool.
But I make him promise not to reveal those details about myself.
“No problem.”
But, he says laughing, “You’ve got to promise to give me a part in your next movie.”
“Deal.”
He asks if I understand about the pay…$8.25 an hour.
I understand.
But the Benefits, he says, are a big plus.
That’s what brought me here, I say.
He says he’s been in tight spots himself, so he knows how it is. He never thought he’d end up in the casino.
“You just need something to tide you over till your next movie comes along, right?”
“Right.”
“This is only temporary, right?”
“Right.”
He further explains that the Benefits don’t kick in until after three months, those three months when you’re on probation.
So temporary means at least three months – and who knew there’d be three months upon three months upon…
Who knew this would turn out to be a job? Maybe a career.
Suliman Veejay became my trainer. I was part of a group of five, the rest of them kids, and I resented every minute of the indoctrination. Suliman was kind and patient with me. He showed us all the machines, how they were the same and how they differed and ex
plained the varied duties and responsibilities of a slot attendant. I kept asking questions, thinking I was still in journalism, still a reporter. I kept forgetting that I was in training for a job, as an $8.25 an hour slot attendant.
No, I was not forgetting, and that was the problem. I was not forgetting at all.
But hell, I had a job.
“That’s something we should appreciate,” I’m telling Melanie after she visited the doctor and after she picked me up at the bus station in Mount Laurel.
There is nothing to whoopee about as the result of my New York meeting with Sylvio, still nothing to celebrate. That publisher was asking too much. But Roe Morgan – still alive with Roe Morgan. So I am trying to turn that into something, as we’re leaving the Dunkin Donuts; like people who do alchemy. The trick is to make something out of nothing. The trick is to keep Melanie upbeat.
“Of course I appreciate it,” she says somewhat unconvincingly. “I know how hard you’re working. You think I don’t know?”
“I also mean about Roe Morgan.”
She doesn’t respond. That name has become poison to her as well, obviously.
“But Sylvio is high on Roe Morgan,” I persist.
Still no response.
Finally, she says, “We both know it’s some other kid Roe Morgan wants. You’re second banana. We also know that you’re ten times the writer of….”
She starts to weep, softly.
“The doctor?”
“No. I’m perfectly fine.”
“That’s something.”
“Yes,” she says. “That’s something.”
“What’s more important than…”
“Oh, Jay!”
“Okay, I know.”
Now she’s really sobbing. She’d been driving, driving us home from Cherry Hill, and we had to pull aside for me to take over the wheel.
She’s really sobbing and I wonder if this is the time, the time to tell her about that offer from Shelly King and Bob Foster. I had kept it from her and don’t know why. Really don’t know why. I do know. I hated it, that’s why, and was afraid that she’d not understand the mockery of being paraded around the casino floor as an AUTHOR. She’d only see the bigger paycheck. Or maybe not. She’d see it as further luring me into casino life; goodbye to all our dreams. Maybe this way or that, I didn’t know, and so I chose not to bring it up for a test. But this would be the time.
“What?” she says, snapping out of the doldrums.
Yes, book signings, book parties, advertising, public relations, newspaper coverage, radio, TV.
“They want to make you public as an author, in a casino? A public spectacle?”
“That was the offer.”
I tell her that Bob Foster, our president, was very nice.
“I’m sure he was,” she says tightly.
“I’m sure you’d like him.”
“I’m sure I would.”
“So there it is.”
She’s thinking and with that her features are turning to granite.
“You mean you’ll be walking around with a sign?”
“That’s the idea.”
“A sign that announces you as an author and mentions the movie.”
“Yes.”
“You realize that mocks you.”
“Oh yeah.”
“You understand that contaminates our movie. Those memories are holy to us.”
“Yes they are.”
“I hope you didn’t say yes.”
“I didn’t.”
“Thank God. What did you say?”
“That I’d get back.”
“You want my answer?”
“I think I know.”
“Not for a million dollars.”
“I was hoping you’d see it in that light.”
“My God, Jay, the indignity.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“You’d be a monkey in a circus. No, they can’t do that to us.”
“At least as a slot attendant I’m somewhat anonymous.”
“Please don’t remind me.”
“I’m only saying…”
“I know what you’re saying.”
Back home, there’s a slight change, there’s a bounce. Yes there is this. The hours. Nine to five. Not quite. There would be evenings and late nights, but no graveyard.
“That’s the only plus,” she says. “But it is something to consider.”
“I know.”
“These hours are killing you, Jay. I hate to tell you this, but it’s made your temper short, and you don’t even look the same. We never have time together.”
“So, not so fast, right?”
“I hate this choice. What should we do?”
“What do you think, Mel?”
“I don’t know.”
“So we can’t say no, not so fast.”
“I guess.”
That’s pretty much how we leave it; not so fast. Strange turn of events, once we’d thought it over. Suddenly it had merit. We never even got to the money part, or the part where I’d never have to wear that green uniform again, or the part where people would stop whistling to get my attention, just the part that I’d have decent hours and be there for her as a husband.
* * *
I’m over at the bank and Debbi Interlante, the teller, asks what’s new. I hate that question but I like Miss Interlante. I hate that question because nothing is new. She’s been telling me for months that a very famous writer (besides me, of course) lives right in the neighborhood and does his banking right here, with her, and wouldn’t it be terrific if the two of us got together.
I have been thinking about this. I could use a writer to pave me along the road to his editor, or at least to endorse, that is blurb, my novel that can’t seem to get published. A good word from someone, someone big, could help and so happens that this writer of Miss Interlante’s is someone pretty big, Bryan Denman. He lives here in Voorhees? Not in Haddonfield?
Asking a favor from another writer, it is done all the time, but humbling, yes, it is humbling. But I think of Melanie and remember that there is also a livelihood to be made and let’s face it, we are desperate, so maybe it is time for some groveling. I think he forgot that, King Solomon, when he wrote Ecclesiastes, in which he said there is a time for everything. He forgot groveling. A time to be proud, a time to grovel.
He usually comes here at around this time, Bryan Denman does, according to Miss Interlante, so why don’t I just wait around and she’ll make the introduction. Sure enough, some ten minutes later, that’s him. I know he’s got something like number 15 on The New York Times bestseller list, and that is pretty good, since Dan Brown and JK Rowling have all of the above slots sewn up.
So we are introduced and it is Caulfield’s dream of meeting the writer. This is not always excellent. Best to admire your heroes from a distance. Bryan Denman is not my hero, necessarily, but he is a novelist who is not cursed and that’s near heroic. We shake hands, he does his business with Miss Interlante, and we stroll out to the parking lot together. I’d rather he not see my car, so I walk him to his, very snappy Mercedes. He’s a big man, tall and wide, double-chin, hair back tight in a pony tail, bad teeth, late forties, tweeds and jeans.
Right off he says he never heard of me (except from Miss Interlante), never read me. Never goes to the movies, either, and if my novel was turned into a movie, can’t be much good. He knows Sharon Glazer out there in Hollywood, and no wonder she’s finished; all those remakes, including Manchurian Candidate, Stepford Wives, Sabrina, Psycho, Out of Towners – all guaranteed to flop, which they did. Why can’t they leave well enough alone? Why do they keep trying to improve on perfection? Can’t be done. Classics are classics for a reason.
They keep pressing the refresh button hoping to duplicate the original. That’s plain lazy. Well, we agree, it’s all corporate, hence, bottom line.
Bryan Denman tells me that Sharon Glazer offered him a contract but he turned her down. (I don’t believe h
im.)
He asks, from out of nowhere, if I believe in God. I say yes. He asks why. The distribution of skills, I explain. There is always someone to play the tuba.
I must be a conservative, he says. I say no, I am not political. But he insists. Again, no, as I go on to say that I am neither to the right or to the left. Both sides are wrong.
He gets into his car, starts it up, and says he’d be happy to help me any way he can. (Miss Interlante told him that I am among the literary cursed? Must be.) He knows I’ve got something new making the rounds and that an endorsement from him could make all the difference. Do I write for love or money? he asks. I say love first, money second. He says I’ve got it backwards.
Is this where I grovel? Do novels have a soul? Yes. That’s why, love first.
“No, you’ve got it backwards,” he says.
To prove that – that writing is a business – he offers to blurb me, praise me to the heavens, but… without reading my manuscript.
“Wish I had the time to read other people, but I don’t.”
“That’s the deal,” he says, gunning the soft engine and edging off. “Let me know.”
As I am left eating the dust of his Mercedes, I’m thinking. Is larceny good? Is this classic moral dilemma? This is done all the time, right? What makes me so holy?
Anyway, I think I’ll pass. No thank you.
Chapter 18
They swarm in off the buses like cattle. They practically moo.
In no time you lose your faith in the goodness of humanity. The psalmist got it wrong. We are MUCH lower than the angels. One week on any casino floor will cure your idealism. People are snippy, testy, cranky, nasty, grumpy, grubby, sly, sneaky, vulgar, fat and ugly. Most nights you wish upon a flood. Destroy this mess and start all over again. Nice try, but God’s experiment didn’t work. Philosophers, scientists and theologians don’t have the answer. Slot attendants do.
Slot Attendant Page 17